I have been writing about this shift for sometime now and the need for marketers to take note of this change to take action. Marketers need to evolve to what I call as "inclusive marketing" methods by involving, empowering customers & building an open channel for a conversation with them.
Davide Raab has provided a very interesting perspectiveon this change. He writes about the power of social media getting more importance when it comes to active customer engagement as compared to search marketing as these are an 'explicit group' of customers wanting to be involved and engaged in a particular topic, issue or cause. He has provided a brilliant summary of how the marketing focus needs to change. Take a look at the table on various dimensions:
| medium | consumer engagement | authority | post-sale relationship | marketing focus |
| mass media (broadcasting) | passively exposed | conferred | service / support | brand message |
| database marketing (narrowcasting) | targeted | relevance-based | cross sell / upsell / retention | segmentation |
| search marketing | activity-triggered | implicit group | Web self-service | content |
| social marketing | consumer-controlled | explicit group | public engagement | empowerment |